World of Speakers E.56: Laura Sievert | TEDx and the search for simplicity

Laura Sievert: It is a balmy 1°C here in central Illinois. But we're hanging in there, that's just fine.

When you were out here in October for TEDxQuincy, which is something that I was a lead organizer on, it was nice weather for you. I think you brought L.A. with you.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, but I think I actually saw it snow, maybe.

Laura Sievert: No.

Ryan Foland: I don't remember.

Laura Sievert: I don't think so.

Ryan Foland: Okay, good.

Here in Southern California we don't bother ourselves with numbers, it's just like it's cold or not. I guess 1°C it's pretty cold, that's good.

Laura Sievert: Well, chilly. Even for us in March, it's a little chilly.

Ryan Foland: Absolutely.

Well today we're not going to talk about snow or the weather, as much as we're going to talk about you, your insights about speaking, about what to do or not to do when it comes to trying to get on stage.

We're going to get an inside perspective from the organizer's standpoint of a successful TEDx organization and then we're probably going to make up some words and have fun and be silly in the meantime.

Does that sound right?

Laura Sievert: That sounds terrific.

Ryan Foland: Okay. I always like to start the show with a bit of storytelling. I know that you are a storyteller, so this should be right up your alley.

I believe that it's easier to get to know people based on the stories of their past than if we were just to read your bio. In that respect, I think your bio should include elements of your past.

But if we were to pick out a story from your bio, and we put it on a platter and we talked about it here, what is one story that comes to mind that really represents who you are as a person?

Think of that story.

No pressure, go for it.

Laura Sievert: Well, we were just talking about TEDx. Of course, people are really familiar with TED and the TED brand and these great inspirational stories.

One day in a bit of a flu-ish, feverish state, I let that curiosity that we talked about kind of get carried away with that.

I really love the idea of never thinking that a little town isn't capable of what a big town can do.

I got down a bit of an Internet rabbit hole as one does when they're home, sick for a change, not being busy, and I said,

"Hey TEDx, that's kind of neat. Those are licensed TED Events and they seem like they take place wherever.

I wonder what the smallest town to hold one was, this year in the US?"

I started googling and I thought, "Well, that town isn't much bigger than my town and even though we're way out here in rural America, I feel like we can contribute to that conversation."

A-Googling I went and found the application form and I thought, "You know what, I really think that we have a solid idea of what we are in the Midwest, and we'd like to talk."

It's so relevant right now, we'd like to talk to the world, because people have diagnosed what Middle America is thinking quite a lot in the past few years.

I wanted middle America to speak for itself.

All that curiosity that I tried to bring every day to what I do in the Arts Council, what I do with my kids, what I do in my life, kind of came out in this TED event where I could sit back and say,

"What do I want to put on the stage? If I had to speak for the very middle of the country, what could I say?"

And we put on a really, really terrific event full of diverse ideas, including the present company.

Ryan Foland: Yes, I will vouch for the fact that it was awesome.

It was a big success in a small town, and the theme was “Big Ideas in Little America”, which is very much a relevant point when it comes to ideas worth spreading.

Laura Sievert: That's right, and we really thought hard about that theme.

The team that we assembled really considered that theme to be sort of inward and outward— what big ideas can Little America give out to the world and what can we bring back and implement here?

So many times we'll go to a conference, let's say you go to Austin and they're doing experimental theatre downtown Austin and you think,

"That's great, how do I bring that to the cornfield? How can I make this palatable to my people?"

It's almost like a cultural disconnect, right?

Ryan Foland: Yeah, one of the things that I found interesting about Quincy, because I had the ability for the executive director of the Quincy Society for Fine Arts to take me around these little personal tours everywhere!

I feel like whether it was on top of an ancient theatre overlooking the city at night, to in the catacombs of things underneath buildings, in like where Lincoln had his big debate all this stuff — there’s a lot of big ideas that have come from that little town.

Laura Sievert: That is absolutely true. I'm just a stone’s throw away from a really amazing underground railroad home.

Again, the Lincoln and Douglas debates were held here.

Big ideas come from anywhere. If we're looking for them and we're listening for the voices of the Midwest or listening for the voices really of any place that's maybe under-represented, we can start to understand each other better as a country, and we can start to have dialogue that's meaningful.

Because we like to think that we can make an impact from wherever we are and certainly TEDxQuincy was a testament to that. I am really very, very proud of that event.

Ryan Foland: I know that you are a storyteller. I'm curious about the connection between your storytelling passion and this inherent sense of curiosity.

Do you feel that curiosity is a key component for storytelling, and if so, what got you curious in the first place?

How come you are someone who on your tombstone are probably going to have "curious" on it?

Where did this all begin?

Laura Sievert: I think all great curiosity starts with reading.

I've got a 4-year-old who is an avid reader, he's actually this week hit his 100th book in preschool, so he's read 100 books, he's 4 years old.

I think I started off just as a devourer of stories.

I took a Native American literature class in college, and took an interest in this idea of oral storytelling, of not just having a story to tell, but performing it with inflection in your voice and passion in what you're doing.

No matter what story you're telling, if you're telling a story of getting your toddler out the door this morning, which I could tell you. He needed to use the potty and we were already dressed for one-degree weather, and we had to get all undressed to go to the potty.

If you're telling that story you can still make it fine and interesting by being an engaging storyteller.

I love this idea of a Native American tradition of oral storytelling. I'm really wrapped up in the history of that and what it means to explain the world through stories and through narratives to make it easier to understand or make it more interesting to understand.

Ryan Foland: Interesting, and I know that you do a lot of advertising as well.

I think somewhere along the lines of what, a half a million dollar budget or something like that?

Laura Sievert: That's right.

In the Midwest, of course, this is a very large budget for our area.

I am on two local television stations, four radio stations, in the newspaper, and we publish a magazine, all on music, theater, art, visual art, and history and humanities.

I personally execute all those live media every week.

That requires a lot of conversational style storytelling, so I don't like to, of course, memorize the dates like a recording.

I like to say, "Oh well, the Muddy River Opera Company will be performing Jack and the Beanstalk," and start talking about what it means to go to Jack and the Beanstalk.

Or, "Take your kids to Jack and the Beanstalk," and really make a case for engagement.

I like that extemporaneous style, I like that conversational style and I think especially in live media plays as well. You feel invited and welcomed, and that is so important in my industry, is welcoming people to the arts.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, it seems like you're really trying to tap into the curiosity of the viewers or the potential audience members, or those people who are going to go see Jack and the Beanstalk.

I think that it's an interesting mix to where you've got this curiosity bug as a result of sort of a deep dive into everything from literature, to ancient mythology, and different culture.

Yet now you're tasked with spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell stories in a way that sort of reverse engineers the curiosity of the people that you're trying to get in front of.

Laura Sievert: And you absolutely have to sort of demystify some of it, too.

So you're talking to a bunch of Midwesterners on a country music station on their radio station in the morning, and talking about why they need to go to the opera this weekend.

I mean, that's no small challenge. No offence to you country music lovers out there.

But I want to make it accessible. I want to say,

"You know what, it might be opera, but you’ll love the story and you know the story, and it was on Shrek, and it was on your Loony Tunes, and you're going to enjoy it."

Or, "You're invited to the symphony," I want people to be able to imagine themselves there.

As soon as you feel like you're part of that audience, you take that next step out the door and I always hope that those stories move people to action.

It's not just about, "Yeah, that sounds neat."

Somebody could have clicked on TEDx and read about their requirements and said, "Oh that sounds neat," but I want everybody to take that next step and say, "Yeah, I am going to go, I'm going to go do that, I'm going to make that happen."

It's about that next step of storytelling for action that I think hopefully sets me apart as a speaker.

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

I talk about the influence a lot and I try to define it as, I guess, a dual definition that it almost takes both of them to really trigger that true influence, and I see it as changing the way people think, and getting people to take action.

I think curiosity is similar, in that when you tap into somebody's curiosity, it sounds like you're getting them to make relevance based on their own life into why it would be of interest to them.

Maybe that's changing the way people are thinking.

But you can be curious about a lot of stuff and not take action and therefore it doesn't work, whether on stage you're creating curiosity, if you don't get people the tools or the ability to take action, then it's just like more noise on the airwaves.

Do you see that there has to be kind of this duality between it? You not only spark interest, but as you said, like you have to get them to take action for it to actually work?

Laura Sievert: That's exactly right, and that kind of comes from that internal motivation of the speaker coming through in their voice.

People are kind of shocked to see me out at so many events.

I bet I go to 6 or 8 events a week. I get very into it.

I take my kids to the symphony or to the concert band and people say, "Well, you seem to really be buying what you're selling," and I'm like, "Well, absolutely!"

I think that's sort of critical, right?

You can always see a speaker that... have you ever seen it where a speaker just isn't really that into it?

Ryan Foland: Yeah, it sounds like this, and I hear this all the time, and I classify speaking not just on the stage, but even when you're just communicating, whether it's the board room or just between friends.

So many times people will just literally say, "This is what I'm working on right now, I'm totally excited about it uh...um...".

And it's like, "Really? Have you said it so many times that you've lost that edge or are you just putting on a show?"

I think it's very easy to see... actually, this is interesting, if you think about speakers, you talk about curiosity, but not necessarily as a result of their delivery.

I think that you could come up with a whole new book around the curious speaker because somebody who's curious listens, and somebody who is curious about what they're doing always has this like learner mentality and they're always digging and getting lost in these Google rabbit holes, as you say.

I think this idea of curiosity, I'd like to weave into the show because I don't really think of myself, if I describe myself as a speaker, I don't describe it using curiosity, but at the end of the day, I speak about topics that I'm curious about, I speak with people who are curious about the topics of which I speak.

And if you think about it, I like this rabbit hole which is curiosity almost as an overarching strategy/tool/guideline for speakers.

Laura Sievert: You hit on something really important there, which is this idea of being a curious listener.

My friends tease me, it's sort of a thing now, that I have what they call "Madlib friends" and a Madlib friend is somebody who just you wouldn't think you would know this person.

For instance, I know a silversmith in Utah who likes to surf.

I know a clockmaker in Memphis who is really into old cigars.

I know a redhead in LA with a podcast that talks to speakers across the world.

But the only way I know all of these crazy madlib friends, these nouns joining together is by being a curious questioner, a curious listener and really trying to make connections all of the time in both my own speaking and my own listening.

You can solve a lot of problems in the world if you're a good listener, and if you're always curious.

Ryan Foland: That's a good one.

You can solve a lot of problems in the world by being curious.

I argue that nobody cares what you do, they care more about the problem that you solve, and so if you can create interest around the problems that you solve, tell people but make sure to pause, to let them react to it—and then we're good to go.

Laura Sievert: Absolutely.

There's the universality in any story.

No matter what it is, you can connect LA to the Midwest, there are lines here.

And if you're listening and having a great dialogue, you're going to find those things that are universal to all people, and that's how you can connect.

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

One of the best pieces of advice that I got from someone who was on a panel was because someone in the audience asked,

"What is the best piece of advice that you would give to somebody else?"

And the person on the panel said, "I have a question for you: how many dots does it take to make a line?"

So Laura, how many dots it takes to make a line?

Laura Sievert: I'm going to say two.

Ryan Foland: It is, yes, it is correct.

Mathematically speaking, a dot has to have a secondary dot for it to become a line, right?

And so he said, "If you think about all of the pieces of information as dots, all of the people as dots, all of the experiences as dots, you can't just expect for there to be a connection with just one. This event that we're at," he said, "Consider this a dot. Whatever happens after the fact that it's up to you, you create another dot to draw that line."

And so it's making me think of this act of listening and you have the curiosity that drives these connections.

Sure, it drives potential connections but you physically have to connect the dots and then you have to keep creating dots to connect those dots.

I think it's very relevant here to where you can be curious, but it could go nowhere unless you decide to continue to follow up.

Like your sickness inspired curiosity about TEDx, it could've just been that.

But it was because you kept putting dots one in front of the other to connect the lines.

And I really see you as a dot connector.

Laura Sievert: Thank you, that is quite a compliment.

I think it is so important to be that person, both in my professional life and then what I do with the volunteer time like TEDx.

I feel like we all have something to share and I feel like I just want to help people get that out.

And really with the TEDx, it was so challenging to decide what stories get told on our stage, and how do we represent diversity here, and what does that look like, and having engaging stories.

I think one of the biggest compliments I had after our TEDx was, "Well, I liked 2 or 3 of these, and 1 or 2 of them I didn't really get."

And everybody said the same thing, but they all picked different ones that they liked, a different one that they didn't get, which says we were trying to be broad and we're trying to have all of this diversity of ideas and really actually hit that on the head.

Because not every topic is going to be the biggest appeal, but everyone will find a topic that they love and I really think that we accomplished that and I am really proud of it.

Ryan Foland: I agree that you did.

And now I'm privy to liking at least one in particular, but that's because I was up on stage, giving it, I had a lot of fun with you whittling down and basically helping me to sharpen that.

So on this note, I want to transition into the part where we talk about your tips for speakers.

Now I think it's a really interesting perspective, because not only are you a speaker, you work with speakers, you are just involved in this aura of creativity in arts in Quincy.

I want to know what are your biggest, best, most important, practical tips when it comes to speaking?

Since you've had so much experience with this, what are some of the non-obvious things that speakers can become more curious about to improve their physical speaking skills?

Laura Sievert: Well I'll tell you, one of the very first things that we did with TEDxQuincy was talk about what our application should look like.

And we're one of the very few TEDxes that require you to do a video application.

We were looking for this 30-second to 90-second pitch to tell us what you want to talk about, are you passionate enough to tell me in 30 seconds what you want to put on my stage.

I mean, we're looking across the country, we have hundreds and hundreds of applications, as a matter of fact, we got applications from three continents to speak on this stage.

So tell me why you want to be on this stage, and sell it.

That elevator pitch is something that's a little maligned in the marketing industry where I came from before this, but that elevator pitch is so important.

If you care about it, tell me why you care about it.

I want to see it in your face and hear it in your voice, and I want you to have done the hard work of distilling this idea into something that I can wrap my arms around and love.

I think you would be a good example — I didn't really think that we were going to put a business related topic on the stage.

Because I go to a lot of business conferences. I was actually the director of marketing for the largest Hallmark chain in America before this career.

I went to a lot of business conferences and I didn't think I wanted to hear any business topics.

However, that pitch was so on point! It was passionate and it was thoughtful, and it was distilled and you'd done the work in advance.

So if you're pitching it out there, if you want to get a speaking gig and you haven't distilled, you've got work to do.

Before you can even walk in my room, I want to hear that you've done the work to make this information dense, even in this pitch.

So that was so, so important, and as a matter of fact I had to watch 500 of these pitches, and there were plenty of them that within the first 10 to 15 seconds I was like,

"Yeah, next."

Ryan Foland: I want to know about maybe the things that turned you off in the first 10 or 15 seconds.

Because it's one thing to have a great talk, it's one thing to have the skills on the stage, it's one thing to work an audience that's live with hundreds of people and you feed enough of the energy and you’re like “Woo!”

But when it comes to your own room and videotaping yourself, and you're trying to package all this lightning into a bottle and then Laura watches it and she's over in 10 seconds — what are some of these things that are triggering you to recognize,

"No, next, next, next."

Laura Sievert: It's not what you might think.

I wasn't too brutal on let's say whether you were super, super rehearsed. I didn't need a super rehearsed pitch.

In fact, the more rehearsed they were sometimes the worse they were.

I just wanted to see in your face that you loved it, that you cared about it.

So many people started with not only a rambling pitch but almost no thesis.

The worst ones were the ones that I kept watching because they were sort of funny/bad but would actually like attack my theme, they'd say,

"Well there's no such thing as Little America."

And I'm like, "Dude, I'm sitting in it, and I'm telling you."

I'm going to tell you that we are sitting 100 miles from a Target store and there is such a thing as Little America.

Ryan Foland: Right.

Laura Sievert: That's a good tip...don't attack your theme.

Ryan Foland: Don't bite the hand that is trying to bring you up onto the stage.

Laura Sievert: That's right.

But just having a little bit of buy-in into what you're trying to tell me because that is so, so important.

And then, not being overly simplistic either.

There's this two-sided coin, you need to distil and you need to have a thesis almost like you're writing a paper in college that I can understand.

But it also can't be so simplistic as to be unreasonable.

There are so many pitches that we got, and I would say 20% of the pitches we got do one thing, learn this one word,

“Take yoga and you will have eternal happiness”.

And we all know it's not that simple.

So oversimplification was just as negative to me as sort of being rambly, because it was just trite, it was just not genuine.

And we talk a lot about being genuine when we talk about how to engage, people can see through a non-genuine pitch, and trying to distil happiness down to a single word is certainly not a genuine thing to me and not coming from a place of authenticity.

Ryan Foland: When you're watching these, do you have any internal sense, like an internal curiositometer that is sort of — yes, we just made that up — curiositometer, where this idea of having too much information almost works against you because there's no room for curiosity.

And then if you have not enough information, it doesn't really engage you because you haven't given enough, or it seems like it's just inauthentic.

Are you kind of looking for elements of what makes you curious as a listener within watching these pitches? Is that something that you can put your finger on?

Laura Sievert: Yeah, what it really, to me, comes down to is somebody who's explained to me why you must tell this story.

This story needs to be told, right, you need this platform because why?

Jazz artists always talk about the idea of flow, each note flows from the last note, they don't think of the note names, they don't think of scales, they just flow.

And I think the motivation of the why behind that story just needs to flow.

I had a guy, he's a mailman here locally, recently tell me a story about building his own fly fishing equipment.

This is not something that is an inherently interesting topic to me. I am from the Midwest but I don't know anything about fly-fishing.

He was so intensely interested in explaining to me how fly fishing is an art and how these flies are put together and they are different colors for different times of day, and he was so incredibly into it.

He had that flow, right. He had the story that I was totally into, totally interested in. And now I know a little something about fly fishing—which is great.

He had to tell that story because it's a part of who he was and that internal motivation just came through in this story about fly fishing.

If you are pitching to my TEDx for this coming year, if you're pitching me, record that interview and show it to somebody who doesn't know you and get some feedback. Do you sound stilted, do they not understand your topic idea, or have you been too simplistic, and most of all why, can they tell you why that story was important to you?

Ryan Foland: I like that, I mean that's the difference, especially if you're somebody who is coming from another continent, or outside of the town, and you're going into it, you think that maybe people would say, "This is why Quincy needs this," or why the TEDx Talk needs it.

But what I'm hearing is tap into your inner fly-fishing-lure-maker and make sure that it comes across that they understand why YOU, why is this important to you and as a result of that, that meant our curiosity in others.

Laura Sievert: Absolutely.

Some of the ones that really interested me, that I hadn't considered putting on the stage.

Let me give an example of Jeri Conboy who is a medical ethicist and she talked about CPR, and informed consent, and do no harm.

We didn't necessarily want to put something like this on the stage, but she had not only really cared about this topic and lived this topic and is an expert in this topic, but she also challenged herself, had submitted challenges to her idea, and answered the questions that we all might have.

Her thesis was that CPR should not be automatic in all cases, and we should not resuscitate people in some cases because the outcomes are not always great.

She thought, “What would be the first argument somebody would say if I said that?”

She said, "Well, in the emergency room it is a different situation," so she thought about my questions before I asked them, and she addressed those in that pitch in a very high-level way.

She almost batted down the questions I was about to ask, and it was so engaging that I just had to have her. She was outstanding.

And that was a great, great, great piece and really well received and is being shared in academic circles right now, which is really fun to see.

Ryan Foland: Now did you see a pretty good transition from the video to the stage? Because I know you're working with a lot of people?

But were you able to see that your interest level in the video was pretty spot on with the end result? You could see traction there, you're saying?

Laura Sievert: Absolutely.

We had 12 speakers and I'm not going to say that everything was perfect, for sure.

I think what's interesting from a TEDx organizer perspective is I'm dealing with people who are experts in their field.

Our keynote speaker was the lead design director of the Field Museum, we had bioethicist, several people had doctorates.

I mean there were just people who were just amazingly qualified and I was in a really unique position to still have something to offer them as far as storytelling went.

You may be an expert in your field and I had actually kind of was like fangirling over this guy from the Field Museum.

I think it just got to be the coolest job I could ever imagine which is to design visual displays that are seen by millions of people at the Field Museum in Chicago, but we worked really hard on his piece and we talked about how to be brutal with the length of your speech, cutting anything extraneous, being information dense, creating a narrative arc in your piece.

I think it was such a learning experience really on both sides that give and take equation leading up to the event to put on these stories that were just riveting.

Some were short and sweet which I really, really loved and I think was important to the design of the event that we had some that were not even 5 or 6 minute range, we had ones that butted up against that 18 minute limit on TEDx Talks, but those 2 people were hung on every word.

But that's because there was so, so, so, so, so much work on the front end: of drafts, and revisions, and thinking through what really needed to be on the stage, and what could be left on the cutting room floor.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, interesting.

I want to dive a little bit more into helping our listeners learn some tips and tricks from the inside on whether it's the application process or just even the emotional roller coaster when it comes to trying to get to the TEDx stage.

Now I've done 4 of these and I'm sure number 5 is on the line somewhere, and I have my perspective with it, but I've never physically organized one of the events.

Typically, I will speak with speakers on the show about how they get themselves onto stages more.

I kind of like to flip this a little bit here, if it's okay with you, to understand some of the things that people can do to increase their chances of landing on the stage.

In particular, the TEDx stage which I think you could speak on with authority, and it could be valuable for people well outside of the Quincy-zone, because there are hundreds of these TEDx organizations popping up everywhere.

Laura Sievert: Absolutely.

I recently was at TED Women in Palm Springs and got to meet with about 150 other TEDx organizers and it's funny how universal some of our problems are. Some of our thoughts where I said, "If I get one more person trying to pitch me oils to save my life, I'm going to — I just don't know what I'm going to do."

And about 10 people are like, "Yeah, I know what you mean, I don't think these oils are going to cure cancer right now," and I'm like, "I think you could be onto something."

One of the things we talked about a lot, and I think I talked about with many of my speakers, was visual aids.

Both in pitching yourself and once you get to that stage, visual aids must be additive, they're such a security blanket.

Because we're used to a lot of business presentations where I've got my PowerPoint up, or if you're getting fancy you could do your Prezi up behind you and they're almost there to remind you of what you're talking about more than they're there to help the audience understand what you're talking about.

I really challenge people to say, "Is this adding to what you're doing or is it taking away? Are they paying attention to you, and your face, and your expression, or are they paying attention to 6 words on a screen?"

We actually had a very, very last minute change with one of my speakers. It was actually a local speaker named Kelsey Celek and she dropped her entire slideshow that went with her TEDx Quincy presentation, and suddenly that whole piece was better.

I think it was only because her expressions and her story were already so strong that the visual aids were just not additive.

The other thing I would say, and I said this a little bit before, but one of my favorite quotes, I don't trade on quotes too often, but there's a quote by Blaise Pascal that says,

"I would've written less but I had not the time."

It's so deep, I love it. It says to me, "Have you done the work to see if everything you're saying is necessary?"

Let me give you a good example of that. Roger Breisch was one of our presenters, he is a really neat guy who's done over 3,500 hours of work on a suicide hotline.

And he was telling stories of compassion and joy found at the end of sometimes very tragic stories of people struggling with suicidal ideation.

One of his early drafts, the story that he was telling was about a woman who had lost her son to suicide, and how hard it was to bury a child.

And in the middle of this story about this woman who had gone through this, he had an aside about Abigail Adams as in John Adams, the president's wife, and how she also buried a son.

And I said to Roger, I said, "I think this is taking me out of your story, I think it's sort of breaking the flow of your story because you suddenly inserted in a very personal modern story this historical reference that may or may not be picked up by your audience, and certainly takes me out of the frame of mind of this very emotional story you're trying to tell."

He actually pushed back on that with me, and we went back and forth on it for a little while and I said,

"Okay, you just try it without that story and read it out loud, and listen to yourself and you tell me what you think."

And I think it was a lightbulb moment. We can say it was true of people in the past or we can say it was true of this specific historical figure in the past and we've really changed the framing of the story by the path that we choose there.

I think what he picked was a much better route, we did drop that line and kind of go high level there, and I will tell you there was not a dry eye in the house after Roger's speech.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, I am going to admit that I shed a tear or two on that.

And part of it was because he got so emotional, and it just your mirror neurons are firing off, and as he was into it, I was into it, so yeah.

Laura Sievert: And he did such hard work and he did such great numbers of drafts and great numbers of challenging himself to really make that product something that we could wrap our arms around, and that kept us at the moment.

That's really hard to do, I really congratulate everybody who went up on that stage and did that because it's such a hard thing to do.

Now a lot of, and to that end, most TEDxes do not do the little elevator pitch that I do at ours, so I think it's a really valuable tool for somebody trying to stage their own event of any type.

But a lot of them require written applications, and I would tell you the same thing— have you done the work:

• have you challenged yourself,

• can you spark curiosity in somebody else,

• and have you really thought about your structure

• and been brutal with yourself about what needs to be there and what doesn't; what's extraneous.

Great movie producers know what to leave on the cutting room floor.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, it's such a hard thing sometimes, and especially for maybe people who traditionally are used to a 30 or 45-minute keynote where they have the time to explore and everything like that, but when they get shoved into this 18-minute-or-less box, it is a challenge, right?

But it's something that is so valuable and I feel that in my own experiences with it, you pushing me for the density of information that I was able to pull off in 6 minutes 45 seconds was not easy, but at the end of the day, I now can look back at it and say, "Well, I could have maybe shaved a little more here a little more there."

It's almost like once you get past that sort of mental bridge that less can be more, then I find myself starting to sort of dive into that and leverage that.

I mean, I'm all about that, but it is not an easy task to feel like it's good to keep chopping until you get just the bare minimum.

Laura Sievert: When you look at the data on it, you're actually going to find that the TEDx speeches that are in that shorter category are watched more frequently once they're up online.

There's a lot of incentive to be information dense.

Think about the last time you had time to listen to a 20-minute— not this podcast, a 20-minute piece, and really engage with it.

I think that a 5- to 7-minute window is so beautiful for engagement that I really, really hope that even in the future TEDx events here, that we hit more in that area because the audiences are engaged and then the online viewership is so much higher.

Ryan Foland: You know what this is making me think about?

This is making me think about being in a small little city, with all kinds of cool things to do, whether it's weird mansions that are built inspired off of like Lawrence of Arabia, to a debate publicly that was one of the turning points for one of the most controversial political elements ever, (and still is,) to walking above ground where people were underneath hiding from oppression to a really cool pawn shop that I got lost in the downstairs of, to a river, to all these things.

So it almost makes me think of your challenge in curating a bit of a city tour for me.

You could have spent a whole week entertaining me with all these different places, but you kind of had that decision to filter down what would be the coolest and highest that would be most interesting to me, and so the tours you took me on makes me think of an information tour dense type talk that you gave me.

So it's not just speeches, it's this search for simplicity when you're engaging with people not necessarily on the stage, but just like in life, right?

Laura Sievert: Right. Gosh, you got a great view of Quincy, Illinois, let me tell you!

I had not quite realized that you got such a good impression of the river city, so thank you.

I think that's absolutely true and I like the phrase you just used — search for simplicity.

If I had to tell you about this town and explain why it's called, they call it the Gem City, the Gem of the midwest.

Those are some of the highlights I would hit. It is really, really neat that Illinois was on the forefront of helping slaves escape slavery into freedom.

I mean that's a really neat story, and something our city really likes to have pride in, and absolutely should.

But every little town's got these stories and every person's got these stories.

If you can search for that simplicity and really put together a great story, I think that's a terrific tack to take.

Another thing I might say, back into the how do you get into these things, the other thing you need to ask yourself and this is a hard question to ask yourself, is are you an expert in this area?

Do you have expertise in this area?

Are you using anecdotal evidence, or do you have a leg to stand on?

Roger is a good example, he is not an expert exactly in suicide prevention, but he's got 3.5K hours of calls to stand on, so he's an expert in my mind.

If you are an expert in something, you need to explain that expertise to me too.

Because as an organizer, I need to understand that you have what's required to tell the story from an authoritative thought, an authoritative place where people will buy into it because you also have your resume behind you, you somehow have a lot of knowledge to share with the world.

I think that was something that trips people up kind of often in the application process.

Ryan Foland: Okay, so as you said expertise, I kind of thought that you said expertease, and potato-potato but if you think about it, it sounds like what you're saying is, “Don't tease people with your expertise.”

In that like if you're an expert but you don't give them enough information to show you're an expert, then you're an expertease, you're just teasing people.

You are not actually letting it all out.

It's almost like you need to be an experformational or expertformaiton to actually drive that information home.

Because you now have the brainpower bandwidth to try to figure out whether or not I'm an expert or if I'm just teasing you with my expertease.

It's a made-up word but we might just have to re-spell it, so do you feel that if people don't qualify their expertise then they are truly experteasing?

Laura Sievert: Experteasing, I really, really like this.

You have come up with a couple of good phrases, my friend. I am enjoying that a lot.

Absolutely, I mean and you've got to think of this is an introduction, I don't know, with the exception of just a few folks, these applicants are total strangers to me, and I want to have felt like you know what you're talking about.

The guy on fly fishing, the mailman who fly fishes, I'm going to tell you, he knows what he's talking about and it is clear, quite early in the conversation, that he knows exactly what he's talking about.

I think it's really important to say that, or the reverse of that.

So here's a really cool story.

I think I mentioned Kelsey Celek already, she's a local theatre director and she gave a presentation on working diversity and inclusion and equality into the fine arts and theatre performance specifically.

And she sort of came at this with, "Here are some really cool things we're doing that can be implemented in small America, that can be an outreach for you in small America, but I'm no expert."

And she said, "But there are experts in diversity, and you should listen to them, and you should make appointments, and you should hear what they have to say."

So she acknowledged what she could offer and she acknowledged what she could not offer.

I thought that was so powerful because sometimes we try to only put in the superlatives when we're selling ourselves.

But it's maybe just as important to say, "Here's what I don't know,” and when I speak on behalf of myself as a TEDx organizer I can tell you every TEDx team has a little different take on what they're after.

I really, really had strong feelings about some of the topics I wanted to see on my stage, and we didn't get them all.

I had some that I didn't have any idea would go on my stage and we loved them and we put them up and they were engaging and terrific.

It was a learning experience through and through, and every TEDx organizer is going to have a little different viewpoint on what they want to see.

But certainly, acknowledging when you can and when you can't speak about something is powerful because you seem more believable and genuine.

Ryan Foland: These are all great things on what to do. Could I push or pressure or encourage you to come up with the top 3 things not to do?

Laura Sievert: Let's see.

Well certainly first of all, in our video interviews, please don't sit outside your job at Taco Bell on the curb.

Think about your surroundings just a little bit.

Put a professional surrounding behind you if you're going to do a video pitch, I know that sounds sort of ridiculous but there are ones where somebody was talking but there was some crazy yellow chair behind them and I'm like,

"What is that yellow chair? I'm really distracted by this yellow chair right now, I'd like to know about that chair — not what you're talking about".

That's an interesting thing not to do.

Certainly, do rehearse and don't seem unrehearsed, don't seem like your searching.

Don't read. I think that was a real turn off to me.

On my stage you can't read it, you can't have cue cards. Nobody wants to see somebody presenting with cue cards.

And if you can't talk about it for 30 to 90 seconds without reading it, then I would have a hard time thinking that you could somehow transition that to a 7 minute speech or a 15 minute speech on my stage without reading it.

You've got this, you know this, you feel these things, you have rehearsed these things.

Another thing not to do is don't try to put 7 full minutes of information or 15 full minutes of information in your 90 seconds.

Pick the best 3 parts, pick the most important 3 parts and you know the rule of threes — focus down to what you really want me to understand to ask you for the second step.

Because that little pitch wasn't the only step, right, we asked more questions, we did more follow-ups and there were more things to do to get into that lineup, but certainly, if you try to just jam all this information into this short little thing, it just started to sound like mud. I don't want mud, I want passion and bullet points, I guess.

I want to know what you’re going to tell me, and how you were going to tell it to me.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, you've got to be the seeds in the mud and sell the fact that you will soon be blooming and impressing people with what comes from that mud.

Laura Sievert: Spring is coming.

Ryan Foland: Excellent.

Well, I can't believe we've already been here on stage together for the last 45 minutes, but I've learned a few things.

Off the top of my head, one is that when you are sick with the flu, you can use that as inspiration to get lost online and google things that you're curious about which might end up being life changing for you.

So every time you're sick, use that as an opportunity to channel into your curiosity. That's a big one.

Laura Sievert: That's right, I like that.

Ryan Foland: I like this theme that we talked about, which is the search for simplicity, and this fight for information density and not just relying on your own instincts because they are flawed.

You will think everything you have to say should be in the talk, but using other people, getting other opinions and just continuously sharpening down the point of what you're trying to make so that you give enough information to create curiosity but not enough to overwhelm people with it, just those core components.

And then maybe it's because I like the fact that we played with this, be an expert, not an expertease, and don't tease people with your expertease.

Just be confident and have the passion and show that you are curious enough about what you are doing that it makes sense for other people to share your passion on another stage so the "why" comes down to why is it that you are creating this certain color-fly fishing-fly for the certain type of the day and why it keeps you up and excited which then you can translate that to potentially another stage and it would make sense to inspire audience about bugs given that situation.

Laura Sievert: Absolutely.

I think creativity, collaboration, innovation, the excitement, it all comes from a place of passion and we can be passionate, we can put that out into the world.

I think you can be captivated by nearly any topic as long as we've really done that work in advance.

And we can connect and we can get people to effect change or go out the door and see the opera or any number of really fun things.

It's just how we make that were a little bit more serious and a little bit more fun.

Ryan Foland: Well, I'll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen, we started with curiosity and we're finishing with art.

Your last sentence pulls it all together. At the end of the day speaking is an art form, at the end of the day the way that you establish and tap into your creativity to inspire others, it's an art form.

And so who better to learn from than the executive director of the place where the basic organizing community arts happened.

I really appreciate the inside artistic view of something that people might just be trying to think of as more of chunks into certain boxes of certain shapes and sizes, but I think it's more complex, it's more dynamic and that makes it that much more exciting.

So Laura, I appreciate this and all this info. If somebody wants to learn more about you or what you're up to, where do we send them online?

Laura Sievert: Check out definitely TEDxQuincy.com.

Certainly America's First Arts Council at artsquincy.org and hook up with me on LinkedIn because it's a good way to know what's coming up next with TEDx and all of the fun of events that we will be experiencing here in 2019 and beyond.

Ryan Foland: Rock N Roll.

And if you want to see my talk on the TEDx Quincy stage, check it out. It's all about one simple thing, not oils that will change your life, but the time you choose to take before you choose to speak, leveraging that Power of the Pause, I appreciate you let me share my passion for my quest for searching for simplicity, especially when it comes to the words you choose to use and how quickly you use those words in a conversation.

Laura Sievert: Absolutely.

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is a bi-monthly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.

We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.

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